Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Octopunk Goes Somewhere He's Only Ever Seen in Cartoons

For this weekend's adventure Julie and I went to the Hollywood Bowl to see Pink Martini, this century's lounge band extraordinaire. It was fan-freakin'-tastic. Sold out crowd, gorgeous night, the band was just amazing. I like them even more now after hearing about where they find the music they choose to play. One song was from an Egyptian musical and the band consulted Arabic professors to make sure they pronounced everything right. At the end the orchestra played Bolero and they set off fireworks and huge plumes of flame over the Bowl. Great stuff.

And Carol Channing was there! No kidding! At first I thought it strange to see her not talking to muppets, but from the moment she started talking she had all 17 thousand-plus people in that place wrapped around her little finger. It's like she breathes stage presence and she's 85 years old.

6 comments:

See, there's just no way to really do Carol Channing justice. You can say she's amazing, and you can watch her on video, but seeing her live, I really feel like we witnessed such a rare and totally memorable experience. I doubt we'll have much longer to catch her live, period, but I'd recommend trying to see her, if at all possible.

OK, no exaggeration, watching her was tantamount to this experience I had in Indonesia in the rain forest. I was like, "Dude! This is so for real! When have I ever been in a for REAL jungle? When will it ever happen again? Look, a monkey! Holy crap! I never thought I'd see this except in movies."

It's that outstanding--you just can't believe someone could own the stage like she does.

So that's my attempt to capture the essence of it--but I don't think hyperbole can match experience in this case.

And speaking of things that were fantastic, the fireworks made me feel like I was six years old. I tend to not get excited about fireworks anymore, but I'm sure I had such a stupid grin on my face the entire time we were watching those.